In the turmoil of revolutions and the fall of empires, history sometimes seems to extend a helping hand: the opportunity, in this instance, to end at least one expansionist movement that has been threatening the West. The possible destruction of the mullahs' regime in Iran would not merely represent a geopolitical victory; it would mark the dawn of an era in which the idea that all human societies must be governed by Allah's law and not by men could finally be escorted back to where it came from.
For 47 years, the mullahs' regime has not only oppressed its own people; it has also served as a center for much of the terrorism that has bloodied the planet. From the 1983 bombing of the US Embassy in Beirut to financing Hezbollah, Hamas and Al-Qaeda, Tehran has exported its "Revolution" to the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The fall of the ayatollahs would offer an unprecedented opportunity.
The objective would be to declare and enforce an alternate set of laws in the West and the Free World that would uphold the values of individual freedom and equality before the law and that would be incompatible with a set of theocratic laws demanding supremacy.
The seventh-century expansionist Islamic ideology openly calls for jihad (holy war), which entails the extermination of Jews, Christians and all other so-called "infidels."
"Allah has indeed purchased from the believers their lives and wealth in exchange for Paradise. They fight in the cause of Allah and kill or are killed. This is a true promise binding on Him in the Torah, the Gospel, and the Quran. And whose promise is truer than Allah's? So rejoice in the exchange you have made with Him. That is ˹truly˺ the ultimate triumph."
— Quran 9:111 , Al-Baqarah.
The hadiths – the ascribed sayings and deeds of Mohammad, some written more than 200 years after his death – (from Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim) describes an apocalyptic battle:
"Allah's Messenger said, 'You (i.e. Muslims) will fight with the Jews until some of them will hide behind stones. The stones will (betray them) saying, 'O 'Abdullah (i.e. slave of Allah)! There is a Jew hiding behind me; so kill him.'"
— Sahih al-Bukhari (Book 56, Hadith 139).
Mainstream scholars often interpret this declaration as eschatological (end-of-times), not a current command. However, Islamists (Hamas, preachers in mosques, jihadist propaganda) cite it as motivation for present-day violence or genocide. The founding charter of Hamas explicitly quotes the hadith above almost verbatim at the end of Article 7, presenting it as Allah's and Mohammad's promise, and using it to religiously justify the murder of all Jews:
"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees."
This hadith has been invoked in sermons by imams in Copenhagen, U.S. mosques and by groups such as Hamas, Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS to justify attacks. Yusuf Al-Qaradawi (1926-2022), a "long time Muslim Brotherhood leader," discussed this hadith in his book Fatwa on Palestine. Qaradawi describes the hadith as "one of the miracles of our Prophet" and frames the battle as an inevitable religious confrontation between all Muslims and all Jews -- not merely a political or territorial dispute -- a precondition for Judgment Day. ISIS spokesman Abu Hudhayfah al-Ansari called for all-out war against Jews until the "battle of stones and trees," portraying it as inevitable:
"Diversify the attacks: detonate explosives, burn them with grenades and fiery agents, shoot them with bullets, cut their throats with sharp knives, and run them over with vehicles. A sincere person will not lack the means to draw blood from the hearts of the Jews, the Christians, and their allies, and thus ease the suffering in the hearts of the believers."
Political Islam is profoundly trapped in a fantasized Middle Ages in which reason bows to dogma and women bow to the whip.
From Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's fatwas (religious opinions) in 1979, which "labels Kurds as infidels," to public executions in 2025 for "enmity against God" or "corruption on Earth," Iran embodies this extremism. After Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, Khomeini issued several fatwas and directives that legitimized violent, often fatal, actions against opponents, consolidating the Islamic Republic's power through systematic bloodshed. These decrees targeted specific political groups, ethnic minorities, and individuals deemed to be "spreading corruption on earth" or "enemies of Allah":
"Indeed, the penalty for those who wage war against Allah and His Messenger and spread mischief in the land is death, crucifixion, cutting off their hands and feet on opposite sides, or exile from the land."
— Quran, Al Maidah 5:33
The disappearance of Iran's regime would create a void that could be filled by a less violent set of values – instead of the same or worse.
My criticism is directed only at individuals who do not aspire to living harmoniously with others who may not share their lifestyles or beliefs. Of course not all Muslims are extremists. Many might even wish to leave Islam – if doing so were not regarded by their coreligionists as apostasy, punishable by death. As Qaradawi admitted on Egyptian television in 2013, "If they had gotten rid of the apostasy punishment [death], Islam would not exist today."
Although the Bible is also filled with violent passages, such as the eschatological Book of Revelations, these are mainly descriptive accounts of events: what took place or will take place. Islam is proscriptive: what you must do:
"And when the sacred months have passed, then kill the polytheists wherever you find them and capture them and besiege them and sit in wait for them at every place of ambush."
— Qur'an, Al-Tawbah, 9:5 (Sahih International translation)."Kill them wherever you come upon them1 and drive them out of the places from which they have driven you out. For persecution2 is far worse than killing. And do not fight them at the Sacred Mosque unless they attack you there. If they do so, then fight them—that is the reward of the disbelievers."
— Qur'an, Al-Baqarah, 2:191 (Dr. Mustaf Khattab translation)"I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip."
— Qur'an, Al-Anfal, 8:12 (Sahih International translation)
Despite the New Testament possibly having tempered violence somewhat, violence has nevertheless had a way of overriding the message of love -- in the name of preserving Christianity. There have historically been some unfortunate rough patches, such as the Crusades, the Inquisition or the Salem Witch Trials. Racial and religious violence finally seems to have slowed down only with the Reformation, the Enlightenment and, one hopes, the Age of Reason, thereby gradually allowing the West to harmonize with modernity.
Our criticism must be directed only at individuals who do not aspire to harmonious and productive lives.
As Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan noted on Kanal D TV's Arena television, on August 21, 2007, as reported by Milliyet, "There is no moderate Islam. Islam is Islam."
What has been said is that a large part of Islam seems to be a political movement using religion as a force multiplier.
The problem in the West and the Free World is that many of Islam's tenets stand in direct opposition to the very idea of democracy. When laws are combined with words that are said to be divine -- the direct word from God -- there is not much room for compromise or debate. The same is true of the Ten Commandments. One cannot say, "Surely God did not really mean that nonsense about Thou shalt not murder -- or adultery." The Bible, however, consists mostly of stories.
The entire Qur'an, on the other hand, is by many taken to be the word of God -- like the Ten Commandments on steroids. There remains, therefore, only submission: the literal translation of the Arabic word "Islam." From the founding writings of the Muslim Brotherhood, such as those of Sayyid Qutb in the 1960s, which justify jihad against "unbelieving" regimes, to the 1988 Hamas charter calling, in Article 7, for the genocide of Jews, the political agenda of Islam unfortunately appears incompatible with any open society.
Modern Muslim societies, Qutb argued, had reverted to a state of jahiliyyah (pre-Islamic ignorance) because they did not follow Sharia law and had replaced divine sovereignty with human sovereignty.
It is therefore time for a debate on how to prevent these values -- imported by many new arrivals and gaining political traction as the number of voters subscribing to these views increases demographically -- from overwhelming the values of the West. Inciting terrorism or murder has never been a matter of freedom of expression. Should there be a ban in Europe — comparable to that of Nazism in German democracy? Would that constitute intolerance, or, rather, refusing to tolerate intolerance?
In Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), the US Supreme Court ruled that speech which intentionally incites immediate or imminent illegal action, and which has a high probability of actually provoking imminent illegal action, does not fall within the scope of "free speech." Keep in mind that even if a court were to rule that "Kill the Jews" and "Kill the infidels" fall into this category, the late Arab leader Yasser Arafat would simply say, "You know what to do."
The debate on the criminalization of political Islam in the West is systematically undermined by the idea of complexity. Mixing religion with politics in some quarters might supposedly be considered "too complex" even to be discussed. This excuse seems a smokescreen. A doctrine that calls for the massacre of non-Muslims and the eventual eradication of any voice that disagrees with anything Islamic should by definition be considered unwelcome.
To paraphrase how author and journalist Douglas Murray framed the situation in one of his many British interviews: Supposing a group from Wales went to Somalia and said, "We want Somalia to be just like Wales," how do you think the Somalis would react?
People in the Free World, including Muslims, often themselves targets of extremist pressure, deserve a society in which faith remains for everyone a private matter of personal choice, free from coercion or death threats.
Drieu Godefridi is a jurist (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain), philosopher (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain) and PhD in legal theory (Paris IV-Sorbonne). He is an entrepreneur, CEO of a European private education group and director of PAN Medias Group. He is the author of The Green Reich (2020).
